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1st AD posted:I dunno, I don't think Babylon 5 was really all that good - they had a great 3rd and 4th season but everything else is a giant pile of poo poo to me. The cast was just really weak to me and the quality of the show is basically held up by Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurasik. Also I think I would have trouble watching any scenes with Jeff Conaway nowadays knowing how much of an addict he was and how it destroyed his life. I guess it's not for everyone, but I quite enjoyed all the seasons, even 1 and 5. Sure Season 1 is a bumpy start and there's not much major story stuff, but it's better than season 1 TNG by a mile, if only because the setting of a gritty space station that actually has an underclass with actual real life concerns like crime, or hunger and what not, was so interesting after years of Star Treks Utopian (only for earth, though!) bull crap, I could wade through the boring monster of the week style stories. And while Season 5 has some issues early on with the telepath bullshit, after the first 10 or 12 eps it's resolved and the rest is almost as good as the show in it's prime, ending with probably a better finale than any other Sci-Fi show ever (still haven't watched What You Leave Behind though). Sleeping In Light is one of the few episodes of anything sci-fi that got me teary eyed in the best of ways. Also, while Katsulas/Jurasik were the only actors worth a damned on the show (and they were loving worth all the damns in the world, fantastic they were), I wouldn't say the rest were so terrible as to be unwatchable. They did a good enough job for me. Sheridan himself was probably one of the better of the non Londo/G'Kar actors, and since he got the most screen time it wasn't so bad. But yeah, Michael O'Hare, Julia Nickson, Claudia Christian and Jerry Doyle are all pretty loving horrible. Not gonna argue. I just keep telling myself while watching that they couldn't afford any better. And luckily O'Hare was only around for the first season, what a god awful and wooden leading mad. Bruce Boxleitner, while not much of an actor himself, was a huge improvement. He will forever be a boss in my mind, how many dudes can nuke the home planet of their enemy, and nuke their evil ex wife, and themselves at the same time and live to tell the tale. What a role model. I love Babylon 5 too much I guess. I can look past some serious flaws. To me the most disappointing thing about the show is how the networks consistently hosed JMS over with the "will they/won't they" game of cancellation that took a well planned out story designed for 5 seasons and made JMS constantly rewrite and shorten plotlines because of fear of cancellation, while in the end he did get his 5 seasons anyway and never really had to gently caress with it to begin with. So you get stuff like the shadow war and war against clark at earth ending way prematurely, and not getting the justice and time to stretch out they deserved considering they were the loving central plot lines. edit: I love DS9 with all my heart, but I think I love B5 at the least just as much. I can't pick one over the other, damnit! Also JMS might be poo poo now but luckily he's already written the story, just let some more talented dudes that him write the actual weekly episode scripts and he can handle the shows main story arc outline. Damo fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 03:27
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yeah but ds9 is far superior also, JMS is a poo poo writer now
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Oct 23, 2013 03:31
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1st AD posted:Also I think I would have trouble watching any scenes with Jeff Conaway nowadays knowing how much of an addict he was and how it destroyed his life. That was known when the show aired. He lost his job on Taxi due to it and on the show he made a speech how this was his last chance. It was the best acting since he was not. Also Bester is amazing 
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Oct 23, 2013 03:32
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1st AD posted:It's not B5, it's the ending to the Year of Hell where all the changes to the show in the previous 2 episodes had literally gotten reset and it was back to status quo for the next episode. A) I now feel like an inadequate star trek fan now for not realizing that. B) Holy poo poo, it looks exactly like B5. C) Token gently caress Berman/Braga since we can, now.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:33
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SuperDucky posted:
It really, really does.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:35
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bobkatt013 posted:That was known when the show aired. He lost his job on Taxi due to it and on the show he made a speech how this was his last chance. It was the best acting since he was not. Also Bester is amazing Bester's backstory is pretty amazing because Koenig keeps to it throughout all of his appearances in the show. Part of it is that Bester learns who his parents really were before PsiCorps and it scars him so badly it causes his fist to be permanently clenched. It's visible in every episode he's in.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:37
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1st AD posted:I dunno, I don't think Babylon 5 was really all that good - they had a great 3rd and 4th season but everything else is a giant pile of poo poo to me. The cast was just really weak to me and the quality of the show is basically held up by Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurasik. Also I think I would have trouble watching any scenes with Jeff Conaway nowadays knowing how much of an addict he was and how it destroyed his life. Yeah, I remember B5 being described somewhere (possibly in one of these threads) as being something like an 800-page novel that's poo poo for about 300 pages, gets great for about 200 pages, and then goes back to being poo poo for the remaining 300 pages.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:38
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I'm actually not upset that B5 got jerked around the way it did, because the 3rd and 4th seasons are actually really good and I couldn't imagine how bad they might be if you had to stretch all that material out to fill season 5. Because even in season 3 there's still some filler episodes that stink. B5 probably would've been a better show if JMS had some better casting, because there's a lot of scenes were people like Claudia Christian absolutely ruin everything by being bad at acting.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:42
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Wowbagger2004 posted:Hell yes, new Star Trek thread. Quoting this from the first page because seeing Riker's hair part on the other side is really, really unnerving and I don't know why. It's like trying to fold your arms the other way. It's just wrong.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:48
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1st AD posted:I'm actually not upset that B5 got jerked around the way it did, because the 3rd and 4th seasons are actually really good and I couldn't imagine how bad they might be if you had to stretch all that material out to fill season 5. Because even in season 3 there's still some filler episodes that stink. The production of B5 is pretty pity amazing for how many wingnuts, addicts, and people with serious medical problems were part of the main cast. Claudia quit during contract negotiations for S5 in part because of JMS being a creep.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:48
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Speaking of Babylon 5 talk, I just found a thing. http://bztv.typepad.com/newsviews/2006/06/spaced_out_star.html A 14 page pdf treatment for an AltUniverse TOS written in 2004 written by JMS and Bryce Zabel. Party Plane Jones posted:The production of B5 is pretty pity amazing for how many wingnuts, addicts, and people with serious medical problems were part of the main cast. Claudia quit during contract negotiations for S5 in part because of JMS being a creep. I remember having this conversation a couple of thread iterations ago. Watching Delenn's face when she talked about war was disturbing, realizing that Mira Furlan witnessed this stuff first hand in Yugoslavia made it even stronger. Or watching Dr Franklin do his manic episodes as a stimulant addict and discovering that he was almost entirely deaf made them even more impressive. Sometimes broken people make the best performers. I think it worked out really well in Babylon 5's case. Brute Squad fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 03:48
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Damo posted:And luckily O'Hare was only around for the first season, what a god awful and wooden leading mad. There was a reason for that, and it's not what you think. Party Plane Jones posted:The production of B5 is pretty pity amazing for how many wingnuts, addicts, and people with serious medical problems were part of the main cast. Claudia quit during contract negotiations for S5 in part because of JMS being a creep. It was made on the ultra-cheap and JMS kind of had to go through the bargain bin of actors. But it worked out for the best sometimes: Real-life addict Jeff Conaway playing the straight man in an alcoholism subplot, Mira Furlan giving an impassioned speech about the senselessness of war during the Yugoslav wars... Luigi Thirty fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 03:50
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This new thread is lovely. The Miranda montage in OP in particular.    Requesting that picture I took of my old hammer-smashed Voyager toy. I seem to have lost my own photo some how. It clearly belongs here, some one with talent and photoshop should put it into a space background too. Long live the new Trek-thread.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:56
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JMS posted:One thing we will discover is that buried deep within the DNA of humans, Vulcans (even Klingons) and other intelligent bi-pedal races is a mathematical code, something buried so deep and of such complexity that it could not possibly have occurred by chance. I'm kind of surprised that of all the episodes of TNG that they thought about extending into an entire series, they went with the one with the alien forerunners.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:57
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Hyperriker posted:
I remember that! I made like an 8 paragraph essay post at the end of that conversation I was super proud of and some people liked.  Also, yay, new Trek thread. Apparently I picked a really good time to take a break... Anyway, I kind of wonder if JMS would even take the opportunity to completely remake/relaunch Babylon 5 if it was offered to him. He seems like the kind of guy who would never recast one of his characters. You can conceivably write around or excise Dr. Franklin, but G'kar and Londo's story was one of the fundamental pillars of the show.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:58
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What if we got a storyline were Superman walked across America being a condescending rear end in a top hat?
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Oct 23, 2013 03:58
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How many of you have seen Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning? It's a fan Star Trek / Babylon 5 parody that is surprisingly excellent. Saw it years ago and was thinking about it today.
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Oct 23, 2013 03:58
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M_Sinistrari posted:The old thread closed before I had a chance to ask the question, but as far as this thing goes: http://www.themarysue.com/new-trek-tv-possibility/ is it the same thing as that kickstarter that was going around that had the backing of some of the show actors or is this something else? 1st AD posted:I dunno, I don't think Babylon 5 was really all that good - they had a great 3rd and 4th season but everything else is a giant pile of poo poo to me. The cast was just really weak to me and the quality of the show is basically held up by Andreas Katsulas and Peter Jurasik. Also I think I would have trouble watching any scenes with Jeff Conaway nowadays knowing how much of an addict he was and how it destroyed his life. Also, in terms of cast troubles, Babylon 5 was the last, best hope of about half a dozen of them. DrSunshine posted:I said this in the last thread, but a show about the early days of human space colonization, with a "pioneer" spirit and a sense of adventure and scientific progress would be a great "realistic" space sci-fi show. You could have lots of sciencey exploration with manned missions to Europa, Titan, Jupiter and Mars, and lots of adventure and intrigue with space colony/Earth politics, corporations mining the asteroid belt, and pioneer groups building O'Neill cylinders in fringes of the Solar System. It'd be optimistic because it presumes a future where people have risen above earthly problems like Climate change and are freely exploring the solar system, but also realistic because it'd take in all the concerns and conflicts of a pioneer society. If only there was a galaxy with a catchier name. Vagabundo in two incarnations of these threads ago posted posted:The way Voyager should have been, in my opinion, is like this:
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Oct 23, 2013 04:03
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There's no reason to wish for a better version of Voyager - despite it's flaws, Battlestar Galactica is a much MUCH better show in every way despite going off the rails halfway through.Brick Card posted:How many of you have seen Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning? It's a fan Star Trek / Babylon 5 parody that is surprisingly excellent. Saw it years ago and was thinking about it today. This used to be on their website I think, does anyone know if it's available for streaming anywhere?
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Oct 23, 2013 04:06
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Ahh, yes, another episode of Voyager where B'Elanna struggles with being a Klingon, as evidenced by yelling a lot while waving a bat'leth around E: Episode is Displaced, this guy that appeared from nowhere seems like a really nice guy  vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv Agree 100% with your Tom Brady fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 04:15
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I just don't agree with the oft-expressed opinion that Voyager should have waded into the Gamma Quadrant/Dominion War. The one thing I'm most happy about even after all these years is that it tried to remain its own thing and not get bogged down in DS9's continuity. We all love DS9 but even Next Gen only made the occasional reference to them. I do think a few episodes of fallout after their return would have made a much better ending than just them flying into the sunset. Probably not an entire season of that, but make the ending a three-parter at least with the feature length adventure in the first two and the homecoming as the sendoff. TNG and DS9 both ended on the note that life was going to go on, but Voyager just kind of stopped.
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Oct 23, 2013 04:16
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I distinctly remember saying "That's it?" at the end of Voyager's finale. It really felt thrown together, like they went "Uhh yeah, we reuse those pajamauniforms from TNG's last episode, uhh Voyager gets some time travel upgrades blows up the Borg I guess and they're home!"
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Oct 23, 2013 04:25
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It's been a while since I've seen it, but I thought DS9's finale sucked. All Good Things remains the finale among finales.
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Oct 23, 2013 04:28
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Slamhound posted:It's been a while since I've seen it, but I thought DS9's finale sucked. I can see that if you were only viewing the final episode of DS9. Personally, I've always viewed everything after Badda-Bing as the "finale" of DS9. Real serialization outside of a soap opera.
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Oct 23, 2013 04:34
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All Good Things is an amazing finale as it's simultaneously a great standalone story, series ending story, ties up a strand from the pilot 7 years prior, gives every member of the ensemble their moment, and it's a good time travel episode.
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Oct 23, 2013 04:36
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Here is another gif  
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Oct 23, 2013 04:38
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Slamhound posted:It's been a while since I've seen it, but I thought DS9's finale sucked. DS9's ending, anticlimactic as it was, is still the second-best ending in Star Trek.
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Oct 23, 2013 04:41
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Mirage posted:DS9's ending, anticlimactic as it was, is still the second-best ending in Star Trek. Camping and row-row-your-boat supremacy.
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Oct 23, 2013 04:43
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kelvron posted:I can see that if you were only viewing the final episode of DS9. Personally, I've always viewed everything after Badda-Bing as the "finale" of DS9. Real serialization outside of a soap opera. Thwomp posted:All Good Things is an amazing finale as it's simultaneously a great standalone story, series ending story, ties up a strand from the pilot 7 years prior, gives every member of the ensemble their moment, and it's a good time travel episode. Mirage posted:DS9's ending, anticlimactic as it was, is still the second-best ending in Star Trek.
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Oct 23, 2013 04:44
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I like the Enterprise finale  I show my friends that already like TNG but not Enterprise that to get them into it. I'm 1 for 2 so far using that method, whatever that means
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Oct 23, 2013 04:48
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Conquistador posted:I like the Enterprise finale 50% of your friends suck.
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Oct 23, 2013 04:49
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Conquistador posted:I like the Enterprise finale It would be better if it didn't come straight the hell out of nowhere and there was an actual lead up to it. I still enjoy the TNG parts of the episode though for all it's fanservicey goodness.
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Oct 23, 2013 05:06
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Babylon 5 is awesome. DS9 is awesome. Stop with the hating, y'alls.
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Oct 23, 2013 05:08
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Oh hello new thread
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Oct 23, 2013 05:10
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^^^^^^^ Slamhound posted:Having flashbacks to episodes 3 months earlier but no Jadzia is bullshit, legal reasons not withstanding. I agree, but the rest of the flashbacks more than make up for it in my mind. Getting to watch Jake Sisko and his father grow up was perfect. Brute Squad fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Oct 23, 2013 |
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Oct 23, 2013 05:11
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Damo posted:I want JMS to be given a billion dollars to remake Babylon 5 with modern tech and a huge per episode budget. Yeah this is ~my sci-fi dream~, but one of my friends poked a good hole in that dream: easy prosthetics and makeup don't make convincing aliens anymore. Lizard men, funny hair men, and bone-head men might have worked in the 90's but it doesn't now. They would have to seriously re-work the aliens to be way less human and that would cost some serious money and pose a lot of challenges. Also JMS hasn't really done anything as good as B5 before or since. Vagabundo posted:Yeah, I remember B5 being described somewhere (possibly in one of these threads) as being something like an 800-page novel that's poo poo for about 300 pages, gets great for about 200 pages, and then goes back to being poo poo for the remaining 300 pages. I don't really know if that's a fair assessment. Season 1 is really rough, but sets up a lot of important foundations for future events you won't really be thinking about on a first watch. Things pick up in Season 2 and by the end of it you should be hooked and the show stays in high gear until the end of season 4, where there's a (slightly rushed) but satisfying conclusion. Season 5 suffers from having the main plot line wrapped up, but in a way I really like it for world building because it shows that the universe still has problems even after the main conflict is resolved, and nobody's riding off into the sunset and living happily ever after. All and all that's a pretty far cry from "its bad for 6/8ths of it". Yeah B5 suffers from some bad episodes and some weak performances, but this is the loving Star Trek Thread. We all love TNG and know how god awful most of the first two seasons are and how it petered out in season 7. DS9's first season was rough, Jadzia never felt like a convincing character, the post-Cardassia part of the ending sucked, and we still hail it as the best Trek. Voyager exists. If you can deal with all of the poo poo Trek has thrown your way and still come through appreciating the good stuff, you can probably really enjoy B5. For every wooden Claudia Christian performance there's another one with Peter Jurasik or Andreas Katsulas knocking it out of the park, and the more you learn about the challenges faced in production of the show the more impressive the high points are. It also manages to deliver a satisfying conclusion which is something DS9, BSG (despite being great shows in other respects), and a lot of other shows struggled to deliver.
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Oct 23, 2013 05:16
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:Also JMS hasn't really done anything as good as B5 before or since. They say that some authors only have one good story in them, and it's particularly true of Strazcynski (and, ironically, Roddenberry).
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Oct 23, 2013 05:21
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Ha ha, hoo boy. My girlfriend has been cheerfully dragging me along through Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis for the first time, and since she's never seen Deep Space 9, that's next on our list. We've watched a few episodes here and there just for fun, and after a stinker of an Atlantis episode tonight I decided to get all  and play a superior episode of DS9. The next episode in the queue? Move Along Home. 
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Oct 23, 2013 05:27
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:If you can deal with all of the poo poo Trek has thrown your way and still come through appreciating the good stuff, you can probably really enjoy B5. The problem is, TV has gotten so good now that I really can't imagine sitting through shows like these anymore because I've become a lot less tolerant of bad production. Even a show like The Walking Dead will still at least have good acting, cinematography, and production design and can be enjoyed on a visceral level despite a floundering and stupid plot.
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Oct 23, 2013 05:28
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:They would have to seriously re-work the aliens to be way less human and that would cost some serious money and pose a lot of challenges. I think this would undermine the show because the aliens in Babylon 5 (or most space opera, really) aren't meant to be truly alien. We shouldn't be goggling at how weird G'Kar and Mollari are, we should be seeing them as characters of made-up nationalities that have decades of bad blood between each other, and we should be getting very much into them as people. Maybe in another few decades tastes will swing back around and everyone will be heavy on very theatrical presentation again, at which point nobody's going to give a poo poo that a Minbari is just a dude with a plastic headpiece.
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